GSAPP MSAUD PROJECT
UP-Poughkeepsie
New York State
Fall 2016 I Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, I New York City
Instructor: Lee Altman
Name: Up-Poughkeepsie
Team: Wanpeng Zu, Yanyan Xu, Jinbao Liu, Linshu Huang
Our design proposal is U-POUGHKEEPSIE which means to bring vitality to create a better and better, up and up Poughkeepsie. We are trying to maximize the potential of underutilized open space which could be an activator to provide activities in Poughkeepsie in order to better serve the community.

Poughkeepsie has many underutilized spaces as a result of urban renewal projects and a general economic decline that has led to abandoned and vacant properties. These spaces have a negative impact on many aspects of citizen life such as pedestrian safety and experience, environment quality, housing price, and in the case of private properties fail to provide tax revenue to the city.
Starting from analyzing Poughkeepsie’s underutilized space and the possibilities that each space can offer, we found five attributes to classify them into ten typologies, including the ownership, bus accessibility, ground condition, building and location, which help us determine proposals according to different programs for each site. The ten typologies with different activities which we design has been combined as a system that could serve different kinds of people within several scales, such as kids, homeless and senior residents.
In order to fund our system, we plan to approach investors. One approach is that we could reorganize underutilized space with non-profit agencies, food banks and also charities for providing a better quality of life for people in Poughkeepsie. Another approach is to reduce the tax for private developers in order to encourage more construction in the underutilized space.
Based on our analysis we can propose that underutilized spaces have the most potential to create a positive impact of the city, and how those sites could be activated. Our system could help to improve the whole city from four aspects: education level, job opportunity, public safety and neighborhood vitality. As a result, the residents could archive a better quality of life and have a vibrant future.